Electronic systems and circuits have made a significant contribution towards the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous electronic technologies such as digital computers, calculators, audio devices, video equipment, and telephone systems have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in analyzing and communicating data, ideas and trends in most areas of business, science, education and entertainment. Frequently, electronic systems designed to provide these advantageous results are realized through the leveraged utilization of centralized resources by distributed network nodes. While leveraged utilization of centralized resources is usually advantageous, environmental conditions can have a significant impact on operations and maintenance of centralized rack equipment.
Centralizing certain resources within a distributed network typically provides desirable benefits. For example, centrally storing and/or processing information typically relieves the necessity of wasteful duplicative storage and/or processing resources at each remote networked node. However, managing large storage and processing capabilities of centralized resources is very complex and expensive. Clients interested in engaging a host to provide centralized resources and services typically have a desire to avoid providing the infrastructure, operation and maintenance directly themselves.
Centralized computing resource centers (e.g., server farms, Application Service Provider Centers, Internet Data Centers, Utility Data Centers, etc.) usually include a variety of equipment related to information processing mounted in racks. For example, a rack can include servers, routers, disk arrays, and operational support components (e.g., power distribution components, fans, etc.). The racks usually provide a convenient and efficient way to arrange computing equipment in a centralized operation location. The configurations of the rack structures usually follow conventional standards. However, the environmental conditions of the centralized locations can vary greatly, both between locations and within one location over time. Organizing and maintaining the infrastructure to support rack equipment for a variety of possible environmental conditions can raise many challenging operational issues.
Environmental conditions can have a variety of significant impacts on rack equipment operation and infrastructure support activities. For example, temperature usually has a significant effect on rack equipment operations. Rack equipment typically generates heat during operations and it is usually critical for rack equipment to be able to dissipate the heat. However, as Fourier's law of Heat Conduction indicates, the difference between the temperature of a rack equipment component and the environmental ambient temperature has a significant impact on the ability to dissipate heat. If sufficient heat is not dissipated the temperature of the various of the rack will constantly increase to intolerable levels (runaway thermal shock), causing the equipment to experience failures and/or produce erroneous results.
In addition to environmental conditions impacting rack equipment, it is also possible for traditional rack equipment to have detrimental impacts on the environment. Dissipating the heat from rack equipment can raise the temperature in the environment and thereby impact equipment in the same environment. In a typical centralized resource architecture there are usually numerous pieces of rack equipment concentrated in close proximity to one another and tend to exponentially increase the ambient temperature. In addition, rack equipment can raise the ambient noise level in an environment. The noise level of rack equipment can be unpleasant and distracting to humans in the area. Furthermore, centralized resource centers are often subject to a number of external constraints. For example, conventional centralized resource centers are often subject to regulatory requirements, such as numerous safety and health regulations that govern locations in which rack equipment is implemented. Again, noise level can reach a level and/or persistence that is detrimental to humans and regulatory requirements often mandate that the ambient noise level has to be maintained at a sufficiently low level when workers are in the area.
Attempting to address all the potential environmental problems that can arise is often complicated and complex. The sheer number of different possible problems and interaction of the different environmental conditions further complicates daunting environmental challenges. Traditional attempts at addressing environmental conditions are usually limited to fixed approaches in which the rack equipment is set to predetermined average settings. By setting the traditional systems to fixed average conditions they do not typically perform well in environmental extremes such as at high and low altitudes, cold and hot climates (e.g., Colorado, Amsterdam, Death Valley, and Tierra del Fuego, etc.). Some, traditional attempts at addressing environmental conditions usually involve running the equipment at lower fixed performance levels in order to reduce the impact of the environment. For example, even though a piece of equipment is capable of performing at a higher performance level it is maintained at a lower level based upon perceived possible environmental conditions (e.g., worst case) without consideration of actual environmental conditions.
Some traditional rack equipment may attempt to compensate for environmental conditions on an individual basis. However, environmental conditions often have a cumulative effect and changes in one component often impact other components. For example, inadequate heat dissipation can cause cascading failures in numerous pieces of rack equipment. Traditional attempts also often include limiting the amount of equipment placed in a rack well below the rack capacity. For example, even though a rack may be capable of holding several servers, only one is mounted in the rack. In addition, some conventional attempts include spreading equipment out to address the cumulative effects of temperature and noise or sound pressure associated with rack equipment operation. However, spreading the equipment out consumes precious centralized floor space.
Most of these prior attempts at addressing environmental issues are somewhat inflexible. Traditional collection, correlation, and analysis of environmental information manually is labor intensive and often requires a significant level of specialized knowledge and expertise. Manually adjusting the rack equipment usually requires the operator to have knowledge and understanding of unique features of each piece of equipment. The complexity and typical dynamic interaction of rack equipment tends to increase the probability of human error in making adjustments.